Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Lawsuit: No Cross-dressing in Conn. Boys Detention

After a 16-year-old male, who has been in state care with a traumatized history since age 5 and who now pretends to be a girl, assaulted staff and fought with girls at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School for girls, he then was relocated to an adult prison for women. But after another violent outbreak, he was relocated to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School for boys in Middletown, and now attorneys are suing the state child welfare and prison officials demanding an appropriate facility for this violent boy who thinks he's a girl.

". . . it is psychologically damaging and harmful for a transgender female to be placed in a male facility and to be unable to express herself as female."-- Lawsuit on behalf of Jane Doe

A 16-year-old transgender girl being held at a boys' detention center alleged that staff members are repeatedly referring to her by her male birth name and male pronouns, forcing her to wear boys' uniforms and banning her from wearing her wig and makeup.

One of the girl's lawyers, Aaron Romano, criticized the youth agency for what he called inconsistent treatment. He said that while she has been receiving hormone therapy under the agency's care, she's being treated like a boy at the detention center.

The girl's lawyers, state Child Advocate Sarah Eagan and the state chapter of the ACLU have been calling on officials to move her to a more appropriate setting with mental health counseling.

A brief statement from DCF said only that the youth, known in court filings as Jane Doe, "assaulted another youth and a staff member at the girls Pueblo Unit and also destroyed state property."

The locked Pueblo unit is on the campus of the former Riverview Children's Hospital in Middletown.

DCF in April won permission from a state judge to transfer the youth to adult prison, citing her history of assaulting staff members in several juvenile treatment settings, including a serious assault against a treatment worker in a Massachusetts facility in late January.

Lawyers for DCF said the department could no longer care for her. The transfer to an adult prison, with no criminal charges pending against the youth, prompted widespread outrage from children's advocates and civil rights groups.

The attorneys for a transgender teen in the custody of Connecticut's Department of Children and Families want a judge to oversee her care. This comes after DCF moved her to an all-boys facility after she allegedly assaulted a youth and staff member over the weekend.

. . . Her case is back in the news after DCF relocated her over the weekend from a psychiatric center for troubled girls to the state's detention center for juvenile boys.

DCF said in a statement on Sunday, "Because there is no suitable place on the Pueblo unit for Jane Doe that can ensure the safety of youth and staff, we have placed her at Connecticut Juvenile Training School in a single room separated from the boys."

In the first decision of its kind, a federal judge has ordered state officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-change for a transsexual prisoner, after finding that the treatment is the only adequate care for the inmate’s gender identity disorder.

“This fact that sex reassignment surgery is for some people medically necessary has recently become more widely recognized,” [District Court Chief Judge Mark L.] Wolf wrote in a landmark 127-page ruling Tuesday. “Denying adequate medical care because of a fear of controversy or criticism from politicians, the press, and the public serves no legitimate penological purpose. It is precisely the type of conduct the Eighth Amendment prohibits.”

The judge did not say who should perform the surgery or where it should be conducted, leaving those decisions to state officials. The cost of the surgery ranges from $7,000 to more than $50,000, depending on the extent of cosmetic work, according to informational surgery and transgender websites.

It was not clear how much postsurgery care would have to be provided, though the state would bear that cost as well.